Public Bill Committee

[Mr. Greg Pope in the Chair]

Clause 11

Independent reviewing officers

Amendment moved [26 June]: No. 35, in clause 11, page 10, line 13, leave out from beginning to ‘it’ in line 14 and insert
‘Whether or not the independent reviewing officer is an officer of the local authority,’.—[Mr. Kidney]

Greg Pope: I remind the Committee that with this we are taking the following amendments: No. 12, in clause 11, page 10, line 18, at end insert—
‘(5) A local authority must ensure that the independent reviewing officer appointed under this section is sufficiently independent.
(6) In this section ‘sufficiently independent’ means—
(a) having minimal connection to the local authority in question;
(b) having not worked for the local authority in question in the last 10 years;
(c) being previously unconnected to the particular child in question; and
(d) having no conflict of interest.’.
No. 33, in clause 11, page 10, line 18, at end insert—
‘(5) In carrying out his functions in relation to subsection (1)(c) above the independent reviewing officer must—
(a) give information to the child about independent advocacy;
(b) where the need for independent advocacy is identified, require the local authority to make arrangements for the provision of independent advocacy for the child.
(6) For the purposes of this section—
(a) “advocacy” means the provision of independent and confidential information, advice, representation and support to a child;
(b) “independent” means that the person appointed is not connected with the local authority by virtue of being—
(i) a member of the local authority or any of their committees or sub-committees, whether elected or co-opted; or
(ii) an officer of the local authority employed by the Children’s Services Department of that authority; or
(iii) a spouse or civil partner of any such person.’.
No. 36, in clause 11, page 10, line 18, at end insert—
‘(5) In carrying out his functions in relation to subsection (1)(c) above the independent reviewing officer must—
(a) give information to the child about independent advocacy; and
(b) where the need for independent advocacy is identified, require the local authority to make arrangements for the provision of independent advocacy for the child.
(6) For the purposes of this section—
(a) “advocacy” means the provisions of independent and confidential information, advice, representations and support to a child;
(b) “independent” means that the local authority has arrangements in place to ensure that the child is protected from any conflict of interest on the part of the advocate appointed.’.

David Kidney: It is a pleasure to see you back in charge of our proceedings, Mr. Pope. Hon. Members will recall that I introduced the amendments on Thursday, albeit briefly. I shall now move on to the specifics.
Amendment No. 35 is a probing amendment to tease out the Government’s thinking on what an independent reviewing officer’s independence means and how they believe that the reviewing officer will be able to do their job independent of the local authority that they are helping. Independent reviewing officers are registered social workers; the local authority for which they carry out their work may employ them or they may be self-employed. In the context of the amendment, that work is participating in the statutory reviews of looked-after children cases, monitoring progress made in accordance with the child’s care plan and reporting their concerns to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.
Clause 11 alters those duties by adding more responsibilities. First, each child will know who their independent reviewing officer is. Secondly, the independent reviewing officer will be charged with assessing the child’s views and wishes and with ensuring that they are taken into account at the statutory reviews.
The amendment relates to the proposed new subsection 25B(4) to the Children Act 1989, which begins:
“If the independent reviewing officer is not an officer of the local authority, it is the duty of the authority”.
It goes on to say what those responsibilities are, which include co-operating with the independent reviewing officer. With those words, the Government draw a distinction between a self-employed independent reviewing officer who is engaged to do the work and one whom the local authority employs. Why does that authority not have a duty to co-operate with an independent reviewing officer who is an officer of the local authority? Surely, our job as Parliament is to ensure that, whoever the independent reviewing officer is, they do their job independently, since it has “independent” in the title. An independent reviewing officer employed by a council could be put in a compromising position if we do not say that the local authority is under a duty to co-operate with them as much as it is required to co-operate with outside officers.
The Family Rights Group has trained 250 independent reviewing officers. It has found that the pressures on independent reviewing officers from the local authorities are equally intense, whether they are an officer of the council or self-employed. If they are independent they worry about whether they will get more contracts if they give the local authority a hard time, and if they are an employee they worry about whether it will affect their career progression and future job with the local authority if they give their employer a hard time.
The amendment’s purpose is to ensure that it is the authority’s duty to co-operate with the independent reviewing officer, whether or not they are an officer of the local authority. I shall be interested to hear the Government’s response. I am reminded by my tenuous knowledge of employment law, which goes back to when I practised as a lawyer more then 11 years ago, that it is an employee’s duty to obey “reasonable and lawful instructions” from their employer. A local authority could say to its employee who is going to take part in a statutory review, “You will have regard to the parlous state of our finances when you take part in the review, won’t you?” If they are under that kind of pressure from their local authority and a child is saying to that independent reviewing officer that they want an outcome that is expensive for the local authority, how is an independent reviewing officer to advocate for the child in the statutory review? If the law of the land says it is the duty of the authority to co-operate with its employee in that situation, at least the independent reviewing officer would be able to turn round to the council and say, “Excuse me, but in this situation you have the duty to co-operate with me. I shall therefore do my job independently, as the law requires.” That is the outcome that all in this room would hope to happen on every occasion. That was my purpose in tabling the amendment.
The group of amendments includes No. 12, which is about the independence of independent reviewing officers, and amendment No. 33, which is about independent advocacy for children who are in contact with the independent reviewing officer. I did not table those amendments and will leave it to those who did to explain them.
I did table amendment No. 36 so I will speak briefly to it. It is very similar to amendment No. 33. I must declare a slight interest because some years ago I was a founder member of a citizen advocacy scheme in Staffordshire called ASIST, which is an acronym for Advocacy Services in Staffordshire. It successfully set up a scheme of advocates for adults covering the entire county and many different situations. It has a good combination of employees who are paid to do the work and volunteers who are trained to do it. They work as a team to provide advocacy across the county.
The first time I saw the advocates in action, having helped found the organisation, was when a large mental institution was closed down and people were moved to independent living in the community. Advocates from ASIST were contracted to carry out advocacy on behalf of the residents. I know that this is a bit of a diversion, Mr. Pope, but shockingly, I met a woman in her 80s in the mental institution who had been admitted because she had had a child out of wedlock when she was a young woman. That is amazing in this day and age.
The advocates provided superb skills to people who had been institutionalised for their entire lives. The advocates got to know them, understood their circumstances, learned what their points of view were and articulated their views and wishes to the reviews, which determined where they would live and what support they needed to live independently. I have seen advocacy at first hand through that tremendously successful scheme. To explain my interest further, I am still a patron of ASIST because it did not want to lose contact with me when I was elected to Parliament.
Amendment No. 36 proposes that when an independent reviewing officer seeks the wishes and views of a child, they should tell the child about the availability of independent advocacy services. If the child wanted somebody to speak for them in a statutory review, they could ask somebody to be their advocate and bat for them in front of the professionals in the review.
Some might argue, as did Lord Adonis in the other place, that if the independent review officer’s role is being strengthened and they will be charged with learning what the child thinks and wants, there is no need for an advocate because the independent review officer can do the necessary work on behalf of the child. I disagree with that because if the independent review officer is to stay true to that title, they will take account of the views of the child, the local authority, other professionals and the parents in deciding what is best for the welfare of the child. That might or might not be what the child wants. The point about an advocate is that they are never diverted from speaking up for what the child says the child wants. Ensuring that that voice is heard in the place where it matters the most is an important role.

Edward Timpson: How does the hon. Gentleman’s scheme of independent advocacy for children through the independent review officer sit with the draft legislation, which is in line with the Adoption and Children Act 2002, and allows for an officer of CAFCASS to be referred by the independent review officer to take on the role as an advocate should the case arise?

David Kidney: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He has offered a way forward on who could be an advocate for a child. A CAFCASS officer is a perfectly acceptable person—independent of everyone in the process—to step in and be that advocate if that is what the child wants. However, we should give the child a diversity of choice. My amendment differs from amendment No. 33, which was fully debated in the other place. That amendment seeks to ensure that the advocate chosen by the child is absolutely independent of the local authority. My amendment does not go that far. If, for example, there is a member of staff in a residential children’s home who has been trained to be an advocate and has gained the appropriate qualification, and a child wants that person to be their advocate, we should not say, “You cannot have that person because they are employed by the local authority so they are not independent.” If the child is confident that that person could speak for them, even against their employers, that is fine by me.
The hon. Gentleman mentions the 2006 Act. I would go back a little further to the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, because that is when the big debate about advocacy first emerged in Parliament. We were given assurances during the passage of that Act—which came to fruition two years later, I think—that a child in care would have access to an advocate if they wanted to make a complaint or a representation about their care. Fortunately, the number of complaints is quite low, but not many youngsters appreciate that they could have an advocate to make their complaint for them, and they certainly do not know what a representation is. Roger Morgan, the children’s rights director, often has difficulty—even though it is his job—explaining to people that representation could be read widely, and that there could already be many situations where a child could access an advocate if they wanted to. Even wanting to have their voice heard at a statutory review could be classified as a representation. I argue that perhaps the Government have done a good thing in the past, but they have, through the kind of language used and the lack of publicity about representation, denied a lot of access to advocacy to children who already probably could have had recourse to it. Later, one or two new clauses that try to reassert the general access to an advocate that a child should have will be proposed.
I want to draw my comments to a close by referring to the recent report by Roger Morgan, the children’s rights director, on children’s views of advocacy. He gives helpful guidance based on his interviews with children. Children and young people regard the independence of the advocate as important, mainly because the advocate would not be involved with the issue at stake, they would be less judgmental than people closely involved, and the process of consulting with the advocate would be more private. On page 13 of the report it states:
“Many children and young people expressed very strong views about this. Some thought it was important that advocates did not work for the same organisation as the people looking after them. Others thought that advocates should not be people in the same home as themselves.”
That shows a healthy pragmatism on behalf of the children and young people: the advocate would be somebody they trusted and their status—whether or not they were an employee of the local authority—would not necessarily be important.
Roger Morgan asked children when they thought an advocate would be of use. These are some of their answers:
“When you feel like complaining”.
They could already access advocacy in that situation.
“When you’re in a meeting and you don’t understand it”.
It is frightening that the professional process can go on around somebody and they do not know what is happening. A good one is:
“When you’re locked up”.
That is an obvious reason for wanting somebody to say something on your behalf.
“When you have been arrested or in trouble at school or in any other bad situation”.
“When I’m too afraid to ask the council”.
The latter is an enlightening comment, which links to giving people the ability and the confidence to know that with someone’s help they would be able to say the right thing at the right time. The final situation quoted in the report was:
“Whenever you feel unable to speak for yourself”.
As a result, Roger Morgan made some recommendations, and I would like to refer to four of them.

Andrew Turner: That is interesting. Will the hon. Gentleman indicate whether those views differ across the country?

David Kidney: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the documents and will happily lend him my copy in a moment.
Roger Morgan describes his methodology, which involves a number of interviews across the country and a number of open opportunities for people to make comments, such as through a website or by writing in. It covers the whole of England and so is drawn from across the country. However, he does not individualise the responses, so it is not possible to see where in the country each person made their comments.
Lastly, I want to refer to four of the seven recommendations that Roger Morgan made as a result of the views that he received from children. First, all children who have a right to help from an advocate need to be told about advocacy and how to contact an advocate. That comes back to the point I made earlier about some children not appreciating that they can have an advocate to make a complaint. They certainly do not understand what a representation means and that they can have an advocate for that reason.
Secondly, most advocates should be independent of the organisation looking after the child, although children should be able to choose an advocate they know from their own service if they wish to do so. That is why amendment No. 36 is different from amendment No. 33. Thirdly, children should have a choice of advocate and should be able to change their advocate if they do not get on with them. That is a matter of practice, but it requires a diversity of providers of advocacy services to be available. Fourthly, children should be able to have the help of an advocate if they need one to help get their views across and not only in relation to complaints.
That is another example of Roger Morgan using his experience to say that although the law perhaps intended a wider access to advocacy, it is mostly coming through in connection with the making of complaints. Therefore, I hope that the amendments can provoke a debate that leads us to see that some changes to advocacy services will definitely be needed in the future. Those could be achieved through changing the law or through the guidance and practice that comes next.

Annette Brooke: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Pope. Amendment No. 35 seems eminently sensible to me. I will wait to hear the Minister’s reassurance that it is not necessary, but I think that it addresses some important points. Indeed, I will perhaps inadvertently touch on some of the points addressed by amendment No. 12, because it seems that the way the position of independent reviewing officer is being set up will make swaps between local authorities more likely, which will be useful.
I live within a unitary authority that is adjacent to another unitary authority so I know from experience that, with regard to careers, there is a great deal of movement between the two unitary authorities. Because of their proximity, it is highly likely that someone in one authority will have worked for the other. People tend to stay in our area once they have moved down. It is important to ensure that we are covering all independent review officers.
The hon. Member for Stafford made the point about self-employed independent reviewing officers who might find it difficult to make challenges for fear that contracts might not be awarded in the future. My concern is about inhibitions or obstacles on the part of the local authority, which mean that the case cannot be strongly put for the child receiving the sort of services that they should receive. The amendment seeks to ensure that local authorities co-operate with independent reviewing officers, whatever their status. To my mind, that would ensure that we have effective challenges on behalf of all looked-after children, regardless of the independent reviewing officer’s employment status.
I made a note that on amendment No. 12 I would listen carefully to the arguments before pronouncing. I shall stick to that so the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham can be assured that I will be listening.
Amendment No. 33 was tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion. I have also supported amendment No. 36. As has already been said, there is a great similarity between the two amendments. There is a difference in that amendment No. 33 contains a more comprehensive interpretation of the term independent. There is probably a balance here: there should be confidence in the independence, but equally it is important that whoever the person is, they have the total trust of the child. The important point and the thrust of the two amendments is the aspect of the independence and the need for advocacy.
I have been impressed by just how many organisations and professionals from the whole spectrum believe there is a need for independent advocacy. Indeed, 30 different organisations have signed the joint statement on it. I have spoken to professionals right across the field and they all suggest that there is a need for more advocacy. Perhaps most important of all, the children themselves want independent advocacy.

Mark Williams: My hon. Friend has mentioned the extensive number of organisations that support our amendment. Would she agree that it is also a question of practice across the United Kingdom and elsewhere? Wales is very much leading the way in terms of the development of independent advocacy. The Assembly’s Children and Young People’s Committee has recommended having an advocacy unit within the Assembly, as well as a national body to provide advocacy services for children.

Annette Brooke: I thank my hon. Friend. I hope that the Minister will be able to touch on that point about equality of service across the UK. Going back to the many supporters of independent advocacy, it would be remiss of me not to refer to the famous reference in 1997. Sir William Utting’s report “People like Us” concluded that looked-after children needed independent advocacy as a source of protection and a means of making their voice heard. There is certainly evidence to suggest that professional advocacy input leads to better decision making and that children’s outcomes are improved as a result.
Independent advocacy is made available now through local decision making and there is also the right to independent advocacy if we get to the complaints stage. But I believe that children and young people should have access to advocacy before something has gone wrong. The independent review officer should inform the child about independent advocacy, what it means, how it can help and how it differs from the roles of a social worker and an independent review officer before each review. Following that discussion, and where the child is clear that he wants an advocate or the independent review officer feels that the child would benefit from one, the local authority should be required to provide advocacy services to that child. Obviously not all children will need or want advocacy. It is a matter of its being available.
At a recent meeting of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, I asked the Minister about children with physical difficulties. If a child has such severe physical difficulties that they are placed quite a long way way from home in specialist residential accommodation, surely there is a need for advocacy. It has been drawn to my attention that that might be a situation where the relationship with the child is an important determinant of the choice of advocate at that point. Being able to interpret the wishes and feelings of children who perhaps cannot communicate fully themselves is such a delicate thing.
I also mentioned mental disabilities. Sadly, many children who are brought into care are likely to have been abused in some way or other. They may have the greatest difficulty expressing their views for that reason. I was heartened by the Minister’s response, which I interpreted to be that in such cases as I described, it would be difficult to think that advocacy would not be needed. I am looking for at least an acknowledgment that independent advocacy is necessary in a number of cases. Perhaps we will need a roll-out process, but surely we should start somewhere by making sure that there is an absolute right to it.
The independent review officer role has been strengthened and I welcome that, but I do not believe that the enhanced role meets the needs of more children to have access to professional independent advocacy. The expression of the child’s views in the decision-making process by an independent review officer who is responsible for facilitating its outcomes is quite distinct from the representation of those views by an advocate who is independent of the process. Review officers cannot practically be expected to enable the necessary participation of the child in the review process, despite the existing requirement in regulations to ensure that the voice of the child is conveyed to the review.
Children still tell the various children’s organisations that they do not feel they are listened to. The hon. Member for Stafford has just given us some examples. One child said of his experience, “I told the IRO that I wanted contact with my sister, but that did not come up at the meeting.” That sounds remarkably odd. Independent review officers have significant responsibilities in relation to chairing review meetings, which means that they do not have the capacity to give young people the dedicated support necessary to ensure that their views can be clearly represented. Chairing a meeting and putting views forward are clearly quite different roles. Moreover, the IRO has to act in the best interests of the child. It is possible that they concluded that what the child wanted was contrary to the child’s best interests. In that situation, would an IRO be able to represent the views of the child as well?
Better decision making can save money in the end. I urge the Ministers to think again and to give further consideration to a statutory right to independent advocacy whenever significant decisions are being made in the lives of looked-after children, and not just when they have cause to complain. That would be integral to the whole Government policy of improving outcomes for children in the care system.

Tim Loughton: May I welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. Pope? I want to speak primarily to amendment No. 12. I agree with much of what has been said by the hon. Members for Stafford and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and I will touch on the subject of advocacy at the end of my comments. I agree that there is a case for a greater use of advocacy before things reach the crisis stage and something has gone wrong. I certainly agree with the method behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendment in trying to tease out the independence of the IRO and argue for greater independence. I am approaching the matter from that same angle.
I went back over the Committee proceedings of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, back in those heady days of 2001-02 when I was in the same role as today, leading for the Opposition. The current Home Secretary was leading for the Government. Great things happen to some people and not to others. That was the piece of legislation that set up the IROs. They came in on an statutory basis in 2004. In another place, Lord Adonis made it clear that the primary role of the IRO was to ensure that the child’s wishes and feelings are listened to. He said:
“The role of the IRO is central to ensuring that the voice of the child is heard. Therefore, Clause 11 introduces a specific duty on the IRO to ensure that the wishes and feelings of the child are given due consideration in care planning.”
He went on:
“The IRO will support children’s active engagement with the care planning process, ensuring that there is greater scrutiny of the care plan for each child in care and making sure that children and young people are informed about their rights if they consider that they have been treated unfairly.”—[Official Report, House of Lords,17 January 2008; Vol. 697, c. GC581.]
None of us would disagree with that.
I challenged the then Health Minister, who is now the Home Secretary, about the independence of the IRO when debating the Adoption and Children Act 2002. That was an important consideration for many of us when the legislation first came in. She said:
“It is vital that reviewing officers are independent of the case management and perhaps the social services department in the authority.”—[Official Report, 20 May 2002; Vol. 386, c. 61.]
I was making the case for an IRO being completely disconnected in terms of previous employment and engagement from the responsible social services department, which would now be the children’s services department. That is what lies behind amendment No. 12.
Since the independent reviewing officers became statutory in September 2004, their functions have been set out. They are there to monitor the local authority’s plans for a looked-after child and, where appropriate, to refer the case to CAFCASS. Will the Minister say how many referrals there have been to CAFCASS, whether that has put a lot of pressure on it and whether it has been able to deal with it? Has that even been a consideration?
The amendment is designed to get around a potential conflict of interests. I made this point during the passage of the 2002 Act and other hon. Members expressed similar concerns. There are obviously difficulties for officers who are employed by the authority and who, in effect, have to challenge their employers, to whom they are contractually accountable; whereas officers who are self-employed risk not being given any further work if they are too challenging and are perceived to be a thorn in the local authority’s side. There is clear potential for a conflict of interests and for an IRO “dumbing down” any criticism of a local authority because it might think that that officer is a bit of a pain and will think again about whether to keep on or give him future case work.

Edward Timpson: Does my hon. Friend agree that in the strengthening and widening of the IRO’s role, the perception of the independence of that role on the part of parents and children is important? In the current system, particularly as part of the care planning process in the court arena, we see parents challenging the work of social workers. The court then has to employ an independent social worker from outside the local authority to carry out a further piece of work, thereby adding to the cost of the process. Is there not a danger that with the strengthening and widening of the role of the IRO, the perception of independence will decrease rather than increase?

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend is absolutely right and has clearly seen that happen in his former job. It is crucial that the independence of the reviewing officer is seen in practice, particularly by the family so that they have confidence in the whole system. The burden of proof is on the Government and the authorities operating the system to show that the IRO is absolutely independent and makes decisions based entirely on the welfare and interests of the child and his family, rather than on any subsidiary interests of the employing authority, for which it might be rather inconvenient if a decision went the wrong way. It is therefore crucial that we get it right.
When the IRO was first established, I welcomed it, and we welcome the widening of that role, but it will not have the necessary effect unless the IRO’s independence and integrity are kept sacrosanct.

David Kidney: Is it not difficult to pursue independence to the state of perfection? The hon. Gentleman’s amendment seeks to make authorities pay for outsiders in every case. Clause 12 is about perhaps setting up a completely independent body, just to do the job. Does it not get more and more expensive but never achieve what he might call the perfection of independence? Is not the better solution the sort of independent reviewing officer that we have now as well as decent advocacy services for children? That would save us all this expense and worry.

Tim Loughton: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman described my amendments as near perfection—he has certainly not done that before. I may return to the exact terminology of the amendments and explain why they are practical rather than idealistic.
In its brief, the General Social Care Council raises points about the qualifications and training of the IRO, and reasserts that it is essential that GSCC registration is a requirement. The council wishes to be involved in the development of the regulations, and it believes that IROs should have appropriate training and accreditation. It would be useful if the Minister commented on that. Clearly, part of the confidence in the role of the IRO is linked to their qualifications and ability to do the job.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole touched on, albeit more in relation to the advocate, the particular needs of children with disabilities in communicating their wishes. During the debate in the Lords, Lord Adonis said that he will
“ensure through statutory guidance that children with communication difficulties or complex needs are supported either by an IRO with the skills necessary to facilitate care planning and to elicit the views of children with communication difficulties or complex needs, or through an IRO who has access to specialist input from someone who has these skills to ensure that the child’s views are elicited and put forward effectively.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 January 2008; Vol. 697, c. GC530.]
That is reassuring, but I am concerned though whether that will happen in practice and whether there are people capable of performing that role.
We know how short of skilled social workers we are. We will be even more short of skilled social workers if more of them are hived off to be IROs and to do other specialist jobs for which a social work qualification is needed. We desperately need more social workers—that is the solution. I would appreciate a comment from the Minister on how the capacity of the system can cope with the particular communication skills required, as described by her noble friend Lord Adonis. If that capacity is not satisfactory at the moment, how will it become so, and how soon will we be at that stage?

Annette Brooke: Will the hon. Gentleman also consider that a severely disabled child, many miles from the local authority that is providing the services, may have formed a relationship with a visitor to the residential home? It may be easier for somebody who has a close relationship with that child to interpret what they want, rather than a distant independent reviewing officer, however skilled they might be.

Tim Loughton: The hon. Lady makes a good point. The issue of children with disabilities is also relevant to the role of an advocate, as she touched on. One of the consortium papers states:
“Disabled children placed away from home urgently need a right to advocacy.”
The same applies to specialist access to IROs. The paper goes on:
“Disabled children are at least three times more likely to be abused or subjected to demeaning treatment than other children and those living away from home are especially vulnerable. Many children in this situation have little or no contact with their families and are very isolated. Advocates can help these children stay safe.”
Similarly, the whole role of the position is also relevant.
The amendment cites four criteria. It is a probing amendment, and no doubt the Minister will shoot it to pieces when referring to the practicalities of putting it in the Bill, but we think that certain benchmarks are needed to assure the independence of the IRO. IROs should have a minimal connection to the local authority in question. Clearly, it is not sufficient for someone who has long been an officer of an authority to give a judgment on former close colleagues, as their judgment might be coloured by that, rather than the underlying needs and welfare of the child. That is why the amendment proposes that the IROs should not have worked for that authority.
When we debated that during the passage of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, six and a half years ago, we looked at the possibility of the officers coming from neighbouring authorities, but as we know, many social workers who work for local authorities, as with many other officers in children’s services departments, can move around quite a lot, particularly among London boroughs and between the home counties. We therefore propose that the officer should not have worked for the local authority in question in the previous 10 years, as that would ensure a good degree of independence.

Andrew Turner: I am listening with some care to what my hon. Friend is saying. I have a problem, which is that I live on the Isle of Wight. I am sure that he is familiar with that in relation to other issues. If the officer has not worked in 10 years, the problem is that they are likely to have left employment for that time if they lived locally, or they have retired. There is also the question of how up to date their knowledge is. Could my hon. Friend give some indication of how many people we are talking about—one in 10 years, or 20 in 10 years? I know that it is difficult, but that would help make my thoughts clearer.

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend makes a helpful and probing intervention. The more the Committee’s proceedings continue, the clearer it has become that the Isle of Wight is a separate universe with a microclimate of its own, and that poses all sorts of problems. The narrow stretch of water between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight has much to answer for.
We are not looking at retired social workers, but social workers move around the system a great deal. With the addition of these new practices for social workers, that flow is likely to be greater. We do not want people who are out of date and lack the necessary training, which is why I quoted from the GSCC earlier and commented that IROs would absolutely need to be capable of doing the job, to be registered and to meet all the standards expected of them. In no way are we trying to have a sort of “Dad’s Army” of IROs—I hasten to add, lest I start to get complaints about that analogy, that the Home Guard did a fine job. There is no question of the individuals in question not being trained. My primary concern is that the IRO is not too close to the people who are effectively paying them or giving them the business, and that their absolute primary concern is the welfare of the child.
The amendment’s third requirement is that the IRO should be previously unconnected with the child in question. They should have an entirely dispassionate view of the child’s circumstances and the experiences leading up to the event on which they are required to make the report. They should not be coloured at all by the fact that they might have heard of that child when working as a social worker some years before, if it was a child who had been in the care system for many years. As a sort of catch-all addition to the amendment, we have said that there should be no conflict of interests. I am sure that the Minister will point to the difficulty in defining that, but this is a probing amendment. The key point is that there should be no conflict of interests that would hinder the IRO’s capacity to make an independent report.
I should like to touch briefly on the comments about advocacy. I have in the past supported greater advocacy as applied to certain groups of vulnerable people. I am sympathetic to what the hon. Members for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and for Stafford have said. We may have more of a debate on that when we come to new clause 31, which deals with the subject of advocates. Certainly, the report from the children’s rights director cited by the hon. Gentleman is excellent, as so many of them are. I agree with his comments. I certainly endorse the responses of children who said that it is essential that they can associate and identify with the IROs, and they need to be able talk with them privately and to be assured of their independence.
A costing has been placed on the availability of advocacy for children’s services. An estimate by the National Children’s Advocacy Consortium showed that on the basis of a 15 per cent. take-up, introducing such a service would cost what it described as a relatively modest £3 million, excluding on-costs. Is that an entirely unrealistic figure? Have the Government done their own costing? Whatever the Minister may say, there is a cost element to the reason why advocacy has not been included in the Bill. The Government set an interesting precedent in the Mental Health Act 2007, and I challenge them to say why it was done for that group of people but they do not propose to include it in this Bill.
The hon. Member for Stafford, who also sat on the Committee on that Bill, will remember that well. Advocacy services for people with mental health problems were included in the draft Bill that was first produced in 2004 and they had mysteriously disappeared from the Bill that was introduced after the Queen’s Speech of 2006. After the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee report, the Government put advocacy back in the Bill and are greatly to be congratulated for doing so.
Advocacy was deemed to be essential for people with mental health problems for three main reasons. The first was to ensure a statutory right to an independent mental health advocate for all patients subject to compulsory powers, for which we can substitute “for all children subject to care orders”, in a perfectly legitimate parallel. The second reason was to make patients aware of that right; making children aware would be perfectly legitimate. The third was to ensure that patients have a right to meet their advocate in private. Again, we could substitute “children” and we have already touched on the importance of meeting in private.
The structure and the rationale behind introducing an advocacy entitlement for mental health patients subject to compulsion sits quite easily with a similar entitlement for children subject to care orders. The pre-legislative scrutiny Committee estimated that the whole-time equivalent of 140 advocates, which was the number deemed to be required, would cost approximately £5 million. There was debate about whether those advocates were physically available or not, so there is question of capacity. Although it is early days for that legislation, has that turned out to have been a realistic estimate and how would a similar measure pan out for children?
The Government still do not see that it is appropriate to introduce similar provisions, for perhaps a lower cost, for children subject to the care system. Given that the criteria for mental health patients could easily be transposed to children in the care system, why does the Minister think that the Government were right to make that provision for mental health patients? They were subjected to close scrutiny and a lot of lobbying, and I did not think that they would but, to give them their due, they did. I am keen to push amendment No. 12 as a probing amendment. I have some constructive questions in support of the principle of advocacy and I will be grateful for the Minister’s response on why the same principles could not be applied here.

Andrew Turner: I would like to look at clause 11, to which the hon. Member for Stafford has tabled amendments. I am concerned: that is not to say that I am opposed to the provision but I would like to consider it further. Do the advocates have to give continued and repeated help, or is someone else to do that? My concern is that the advocates will deal with one person one day, another person another day and a third person on a third day. It would be much better if a youngster had continuous help. The problem with these youngsters is that they are likely to be moved from one person to another. Can the Minister ensure that these youngsters have continuous help?

Beverley Hughes: We have had an interesting debate and there is very little difference between the views of Ministers and of hon. Members on both sides of the Committee about what the amendments are trying to achieve and the assurances that they are designed to elicit from me.
Before turning to the specifics of the amendments, I shall reiterate what we were trying to do when we developed the White Paper around four key underpinning principles, one of which was the centrality of the voice of the child. That is why “Care Matters” set out a vision for a care system that systematically and consistently promotes the voice of children and ensures that their voice is heard. Taken together—it is important to see them together—the whole thrust of the proposals is systemic change, with the entire care system being child focused and decisions being made in the best interests of the child after having considered properly the child’s views and needs, just as any parent would. That is the intention of the proposals.
The people who are best placed to ensure that children are actively engaged in decisions that affect them are those who already have a professional responsibility for the child’s day-to-day care, and who therefore have practical experience of involving the child in day-to-day decisions. We agree completely that advocacy can have an important role to play for looked-after children. As hon. Members have noted, under the current statutory framework, all looked-after children should already have access to advocacy services to help them to pursue complaints and make representations about the services that they receive. I accept that the latter has not happened as much as it could have or as much as it needs to, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said. However we believe that our proposed changes, particularly in clause 11, will address that.
Statutory guidance makes it clear that we expect children to have access to advocates beyond the formal complaints procedure: for example, a child should be able to get the support of an advocate in making representations about changes that may be required to the service that they receive. I therefore say to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole that I do not think this is a matter of law, but a matter of changing practice through the new statutory guidance. I am not persuaded that providing more advocates for all looked-after children in other circumstances would necessarily achieve what we are all trying to achieve.
To the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham I say that cost was not the primary consideration. Looking at the subject in the round, as we did when developing the policy, we see that there are already many professionals—sometimes a whole plethora—who are involved with and interact with looked-after children. Increasing advocacy for every single child and adding an additional person into that mix can result in more confusion between the adults’ roles and even greater complication of relationships.
We are doing two things. First, to improve children’s participation in decisions about their care, we want to equip all those people who are working closely with them on a day-to-day basis—particularly carers, social workers and designated teachers—with the right skills to ensure that they really are listening to and understanding and taking account of children’s wishes. In particular, in clause 11, we are strengthening the role of the independent reviewing officer.
We also want to improve the practice of social workers who have day-to-day responsibility for children’s cases by setting out in guidance clear expectations for visiting looked-after children wherever they are placed. We are revising the statutory guidance on care planning to make it clear that social workers, too, have a responsibility to communicate properly with children and to record information systematically in the care plans so that care plans are comprehensive and up to date. For the first time, we also provide for new statutory guidance on the role of the independent reviewing officers responsible for monitoring the case as a whole and overseeing regular reviews of the care plan.
I will go through the various elements of how we want to strengthen that role, and I ask Members to think about them as a whole. We will require local authorities to appoint a named IRO for each child to enhance the personal accountability and individual responsibilities of each IRO. We will require IROs to spend time individually with each child before any review, so that that IRO personally establishes the child’s wishes and feelings about the issues that will be covered at the care planning meeting. The example the hon. Lady gave about the child who wanted contact with her sister should simply not happen, and we are going to make that clear.

David Kidney: I am anxious to know whether the word “representation” is deliberate a restriction on the right to advocacy. In the example that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole gave, if, at a case review, a child wanted it to be made known that he or she wanted to have contact with a brother or sister, would that entitle the child to an advocate to make sure it was said in the meeting?

Beverley Hughes: That is an interesting question. I take “representation” in the terms in which we describe it here, potentially including any aspect of the services the child is receiving. The first and preferred option is to ensure that it is the IRO who raises the issues that are germane to a child’s future. If that is not done, there may be room for advocacy or for some other means of ensuring that it is done.

David Kidney: Is it not too late the day after the case review if it has not been done, and should not my right hon. Friend give a commitment to the Committee that in the new guidance it will be made clear that “representation” should be read very widely and might include the example we have just discussed?

Beverley Hughes: Yes, I am happy to give the assurance that we want “representation” to be read widely, and to put that on the record.
We also want to introduce a duty on the IRO to monitor the local authority’s performance of its functions in relation to the case. It is important to understand that this duty will extend the IRO’s existing monitoring role, which is confined to the authority’s functions in respect of the review. It gives the reviewing officer a much broader scrutiny and monitoring role of the local authority’s functions in the whole of that child’s case.

Edward Timpson: Will the Minister clarify what consideration is being given to a sibling group? The way the legislation is drafted, each child will have its own independent reviewing officer but there may be circumstances—we see it already in the current system—where two or more siblings have the same independent reviewing officer. Whether that is done for convenience or cost or is really necessary is still unclear. Will there be a commitment to ensure that each child’s case is looked at individually rather than a sibling group being looked at in the round and given the same independent reviewing officer, even if each sibling’s needs are different?

Beverley Hughes: It is very important that those decisions are made in relation both to the needs of each child and the needs of children as a group. If each child has their own independent reviewing officer for reasons to do with their particular circumstances, it is clearly very important in those circumstances that all the independent reviewing officers talk together about the needs of the individual versus the needs of the children as a group, and communicate about decisions that are often very difficult. The bottom line is that if each individual child needs to have an independent reviewing officer, that should be done. We must ensure that each individual child’s needs are catered for.
We will also introduce a requirement for the IRO to ensure that the local authority gives due consideration to any views expressed by the child. We will strengthen the guidance on the role of IROs by defining a significant event when a review must take place before any proposed change affecting the child can occur. We will update the guidance so that a referral by the IRO to CAFCASS is no longer seen as the last resort, but considered as a real option to ensure proper scrutiny of local authority decisions in any cases where the individual IRO believes it is appropriate to escalate any well founded professional concerns.
We will amend guidance to specify optimum case loads for IROs because, at present, we know that one of the factors in the failure of the IROs to fulfil the promise that we felt they had in the original legislation is the variability between local authorities in the size of IRO case loads. As I mentioned, that is impeding effectiveness in some services.
We will address statutory guidance to the IROs themselves on the importance of maintaining their independent voice in care planning, and on how to perform their role more effectively. It will be the first time that statutory guidance of that sort, on how to perform their role, will have been issued.
Finally, we will set out in regulations a description of the IRO similar to that in the Review of Children's Cases (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2004 that specifies the qualifications and experience the IRO must have that requires him or her to be independent of the management of the case. That is a point raised by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. To clarify, regulations already require that the IRO must be registered as a social worker with the General Social Care Council and must have sufficient experience to undertake the functions. We will set out that description more fully in regulations.
Further, we will also expect IROs either to have the skills or to be able to access the specialist input necessary to elicit the views of children with communication difficulties or complex needs, and to do that effectively. Again, to answer a question raised by the hon. Gentleman, in developing the guidance around this expectation, we will undertake research on the type of support and skills that are required. That will include where advocacy, particularly specialist advocacy, might provide useful additional support to children. Through that research, we will look at any capacity problems in relation to that specialist expertise.
Amendments Nos. 33 and 36 would require the independent reviewing officer to give information to the child about independent advocacy. I am happy to commit to address that point in the new statutory guidance that will be issued directly to IROs for the first time following this Bill. We will ensure that the guidance makes it clear that the IRO should seek the assistance of a professional independent advocate if they are unable to ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings. The members of the National Children’s Advocacy Consortium have already discussed this with us and they will be consulted closely during the development of the guidance.
Those amendments also seek to require the local authority to make arrangements for the provision of an advocate when the need for one is identified. That is not necessary, as it would simply duplicate existing law. The Advocacy Services and Representations Procedure (Children) (Amendment) Regulations 2004 already require that when a local authority becomes aware that a child or young person wishes to exercise their right to make a complaint or other representation about services they receive, the authority must provide them with information about advocacy services and offer help in obtaining an advocate. Our reforms both to practice and to the legislative framework will mean that we can deliver a system that puts the voice of the child at the centre. I hope that on that basis, and given our commitment to address those points in the new guidance issued directly to IROs, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford will be satisfied and feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Turning to some of the specific questions raised by amendments Nos. 12 and 35, regarding IRO independence and the duty of a local authority to co-operate whether or not they are officers of the authority, I completely understand the concern about IROs independence. In developing the policy, I grappled with that over a long period. My inclination initially was to go for a completely independent national service. However, when we looked at it in detail, my view changed.
In consulting a very wide range of people, we found little consensus on why IROs have in some areas failed to have the impact on improving professional practice that we had hoped for. The evidence was insufficient to enable us to determine whether perceived shortcomings in case review processes were attributable, for example, to weakness in training and support or the variation in caseloads, or whether there was a more fundamental problem with the whole structure. It is also worth saying that the statutory framework for IROs only came into force in September 2004.
I was persuaded in the end, not least by the views of some key stakeholders, including the Family Justice Council, which told me:
“The drastic step of relocating responsibility for IROs outside local authorities, for example within CAFCASS or some other independent organisation, demands serious consideration. However, the level of disruption and expense and the unlikelihood of any, or any sufficient increase in CAFCASS resources...is a strong argument against. Moreover, the issue of independence from the local authority, perceived or actual, is not, in the view of the Council, the central issue.”
What I think that means is that, in all these cases, there is an important balance to be struck—as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said—between independence and feeling sufficiently strong and having the authority to be independent, and needing to co-operate with the local authority in the interests of the child. What we are asking IROs is to have not only the force of law behind them—what we are doing today—but their own sense of authority in striking that balance in the best possible way for each child.
We also commissioned a survey of IROs and, of the 70 responses, only three cited concerns about potential conflicts of interest in their role. Even in those cases, the concern was more about which part of the local authority they sat in—which department—rather a fundamental conflict of interest per se.
In implementing the measures, we will monitor progress very closely. If, as we hope, the desired changes in the effectiveness of IROs can be achieved through the new framework in clause 11, it may not be necessary to go further. If they cannot, we include the powers in clause 12 to establish a new national IRO service, entirely independent, if that is necessary.

Edward Timpson: After the 2004 Act, we saw the introduction and recruitment of regional networks of IROs, monitored by the regional network group, as I understand it. Can the Minister confirm that that is still an ongoing network group and will it be extended as part of this reorganisation of the IRO system?

Beverley Hughes: We have no plans to change that—indeed, as I think the hon. Gentleman is saying, there is a case for making sure that those regional networks are as strong as they need to be. The force of the Bill and the guidance we issue to IROs will give a greater impetus to those networks, so that IROs can work together, talk together and work out how to maximise the potential of the changes in legislation that we are talking about today.
Turning specifically to amendment No. 35, the purpose behind new section 25B(1)(4) of the 1989 Act, inserted by clause 11, is to ensure that, in those local authorities where the independent reviewing officer is not a salaried member of staff, the IRO is not in any way put at a disadvantage in carrying out their functions. We expect those IROs to have the full co-operation of the local authority. We believe that the amendment is unnecessary, because it would make legislative provision requiring an authority to work reasonably with its own employees.
Hon. Members raised the concern that those IROs employed by a local authority might have their arms twisted because of other pressures on the local authority, extraneous to the case. We are clear that employees have a duty only to co-operate with lawful and reasonable instructions from their local authority, so I do not think there is a need to change the law.
I hope that hon. Members will recognise our commitment to finding the right way forward on these important and complex questions, and that what we have in the Bill is a very considerable strengthening of IROs’ independence. Nobody—IROs, local authorities, other agencies—can be in any doubt about the role we want the IROs to play. We are enshrining that in the Bill, and it will supported by statutory guidance, for the first time, on how IROs are to undertake their role in practice, day-to-day, in protecting both the voice of the child and their own independence.
I hope, with those assurances arising from the various probing questions Members have asked, the Committee will feel that we have a good regime in the Bill and that what we need to do is make sure it is put into practice.

David Kidney: I hope you will agree, Mr Pope, that we have had an important and interesting debate and in just 75 minutes, we have covered two very important subjects—the strength and role of the independent reviewing officer and access for children in care to independent advocacy. All hon. Members, and my right hon. Friend the Minister, have made concise contributions and have deployed a strong set of arguments for and against each position we have been discussing. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole for saying that amendment No. 35 is “eminently sensible” and to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for saying he agreed with much of what I said in support of that amendment.
If we can move on to the Minister’s response to their points, as the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said, the thrust of amendments Nos. 33 and 36 is the need for independence of advocacy. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for taking a lot of time to deal with the matter of advocacy. I think she is right to some extent that existing law would be fine if it operated properly. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham suggested using the precedent of advocates in mental health services for children in care. I would say that children in care provided the precedent for mental health service advocates, because the entitlement to advocacy for complaints and representations was introduced for children in care before it was ever used for mental health patients.
The role and purpose of advocacy has been developed and refined since the child’s right to an advocate was introduced. We therefore have quite a good model in mental health: there is an entitlement to the service, there is a right to be told about the entitlement, and there is a right to private access to the advocate. That should be the model in every area. I am sure the Minister is correct in saying that, through guidance, we can get to the same position for children in care. I hope that we will all be consulted later on the wording of the guidance to ensure that that is done.
On amendment No. 35, my right hon. Friend made the point that I thought she would make, that an employee of a local authority will have all the rights and access to resources to do their job without the need to specify in legislation that there is a duty on the employer to co-operate with their employee. I think we would all expect an employer to co-operate with an employee who has an important statutory role to fulfil. As she rightly assumed, I am concerned about arm twisting—perhaps not physical arm twisting, but the sort of subtle pressure that I described when introducing the amendment.
My right hon. Friend reminds us, as I said in my speech, that an employer is entitled to expect an employee to obey a lawful and reasonable instruction. She said it would not be reasonable and lawful for the local authority to tell the independent reviewing officer to have regard to something outside the case review, such as the financial situation of the council, when making their decision in their role as independent reviewing officer. I am a little more sanguine than she is in thinking that those pressures will not be there and will not tell in the outcome, provided that we are careful. Again, I ask her to ensure that that point is dealt with when guidance on the strengthened role is produced to protect employees.
Finally, I am glad that the Chairman agreed to group the amendments dealing with independent reviewing officers and advocacy, because I believe that the two issues go together very well. To expect the independent reviewing officer to be absolutely independent, to stand up for children and to deal with the plethora of professionals, as my right hon. Friend described them, but still come to the right solution in representing the child’s views and wishes is expecting too much, whoever provides the role. Even if we end up implementing clause 12 and creating a new body specifically to do the job, I still think that it is flawed because of the intellectual construct of that role.
With the benefit of many years of experience with the ASIST advocacy scheme in Staffordshire, whose work I have seen at first hand more than once, I believe that the advocate’s role is a special and dedicated one that should be separate from anybody who is going to make a decision about the welfare of the child. This is about ensuring that the views of the child are expressed properly at the right time and to the right people.

Andrew Turner: Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, will he deal with the importance of continuing representation of people? It should not seem like, “Bang! Here is one decision. Bang! Here is another decision.”

David Kidney: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I was saving dealing with his contribution to the debate until last, because that is a point that I agree with. I think that we can be relaxed about who becomes the IRO. We are strengthening the law relating to the role of that post, and we are doing fine. If we listen to the representations from the General Social Care Council and always ensure that IROs are registered social workers who have adequate training and accreditation, whether they work for the council, a separate body or are self-employed, we can rely on them to fulfil their role. My point is that that role is not to express the wishes of the child and ensure that someone persists in giving those views at the right time to the right people, which I think ought to be the role of the advocate. That meets the hon. Gentleman’s point. A plethora of professionals may come and go, such as social workers, consultant psychiatrists and head teachers. One of the complaints that young people make is that they can constantly be allocated a new social worker, so a new face appears. Equally, an IRO will have a case load in their day job and the case load for their IRO responsibilities might be for more than one child.
The advocate would be the person by the child’s side, in private and in the place where they live, talking about their wishes and desires and going with them to the meetings. They would speak on the child’s behalf against the sea of faces of professional people, who might have changed since the last time they all got together. The advocate would be the one person the child trusts and knows speaks for them. Having had their voice heard, the decision might not go the way the child had hoped, but they would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that they had had a fair hearing and that their point of view was stated. That is probably one of the greatest benefits of advocacy: what matters is not whether the case succeeds, but that it was made at the right time and to the right people.
That combination of the position of the IRO and the availability of an advocate, if the child wants one, to make those representations at the right time will be the best solution for improving the circumstances of children in care. Having listened to the Minister’s explanation of how she thinks the present law satisfactorily covers my concerns, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Beverley Hughes: I shall speak briefly to the clause. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee appreciate that the measures in the clause, taken together, represent a significant strengthening of the role of the IRO. There is an important difference between the position of looked-after children and that of other categories of people, such as mental health users, for example, precisely because we have an IRO for each and every child. I intend to use the statutory guidance that we issue to those officers to ensure that they are able to fulfil the roles of representing the child’s wishes and independently scrutinising and monitoring the local authorities in the way we all want them to.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 12

Power to make further provision concerning independent reviewing officers: England

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Beverley Hughes: I shall not speak at great length on this clause. It is important because it sends a signal that we are absolutely serious about maximising the potential of the provisions in clause 11. If we do not, we will move within a specified period to establish a completely independent national service. That should make it absolutely clear that we are serious, so it is important to have that power set out in the clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13

Power to make further provision concerning independent reviewing officers: Wales

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Beverley Hughes: The powers outlined in this clause simply mirror those set out in clause 12 for England and would be used to establish a national IRO service in Wales, if necessary.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 14

Orders under sections 12 and 13: supplementary provisions

Beverley Hughes: I beg to move amendment No. 24, in clause 14, page 12, line 8, leave out ‘this section’ and insert ‘section 12 or 13’.

Greg Pope: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment No. 25.

Beverley Hughes: These are simply minor and technical amendments, and I hope that the Committee will be happy to accept them. Amendment. No. 24 amends clause 14 to correct a minor drafting error, and ensures that subsection (2) correctly cross-refers to an order made under sections 12 and 13.

[Hywel Williams in the Chair]
Amendment No. 25 amends clause 45 of the Bill by removing subsection (2), the privilege amendment inserted by convention in the final stage of the Bill’s passage in the other place. The subsection reserves the Commons’ rights in relation to the financial implications of the Bill, and is no longer needed now that the Bill has been passed to this House. So, Mr. Williams, I hope that Members will be happy to accept the Government amendments.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 14, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 15

Expiry of powers conferred by sections 12 and 13

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Beverley Hughes: The clause provides for the powers exercisable under clause 12 in relation to England or clause 13 in relation to Wales to establish a national IRO service to expire, if they are not used within seven years of Royal Assent.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 16

Duty of local authority to ensure visits to looked after children and others

Tim Loughton: I beg to move amendment No. 13, in clause 16, page 13, line 6, leave out ‘representative of the authority’ and insert
‘a registered social worker or equivalent appropriate professional representing the authority’.

Hywel Williams: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 14, in clause 16, page 13, leave out lines 23 to 25.
No. 16, in clause 19, page 15, line 24, leave out ‘representative of the authority’ and insert
‘a registered social worker or equivalent appropriate professional representing the authority.’.

Tim Loughton: Mr. Pope has transmogrified into you, Mr. Williams, and we are delighted that you are here overseeing our proceedings again.
These are probing amendments, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s response to them. They are particularly concerned with the quality and continuity of the visiting and monitoring of children who are placed away from the responsible local authority area. We will return to that subject under clauses 18 and 19.
The purpose of the amendments is to put in the Bill a more detailed requirement that it should be a registered social worker or equivalent appropriate professional representing the authority, rather than simply “a representative of the authority”, which can cover a multitude of sins. Indeed, I would be grateful for the Minister’s thoughts on to what exactly the terminology “a representative” might extend.
We are talking in many cases about children with complex requirements, particularly if they are placed in children’s homes with specialist facilities. For all the reasons we have been debating with regard to the Bill, it is absolutely essential that the most appropriate person—an appropriately qualified person—is responsible for the child, and provides a key link between that child and the placing authority when decisions are made about that child’s future. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the person who is making the visits, and who will be the direct contact with the child in the care system, should be of significant status—they should be a registered social worker or equivalent—not just a trainee or somebody from a different department who is nominated as the authority’s representative. It should be somebody who is completely au fait with the procedures that put that child in the care system in the first place; with the procedures that may ultimately get the child out of the system; and with the level of care and facilities available to that child to assist their progress and ensure, for example, that the child gets access to the sort of schooling that to which we want them to have access. There are further measures in the Bill to ensure the continuity of the school placement and so forth. It is perfectly realistic that that person should be a registered social worker or an equivalent professional.
A point I made, and which I will make again under clause 18, concerns the large number of children who are placed out of area. Kent estimates that it has 1,250 children in care who were placed in the county by other authorities, and the latest estimate I have for my own authority in West Sussex is some 700. It is therefore essential that children who are placed at a distance have the same standard of visitor as they would expect, and to which they would be entitled, if they were placed within the local authority’s area.
I raised the issue of the use and attraction of volunteer social workers, particularly as a preventive measure, for liaison with families. I am not trying to row back and exclude the use of volunteer social workers, but the responsible person who makes the decisions and will have the contact should primarily be a registered social worker or someone of an equivalent professional standard. However, that does not exclude volunteer social workers from performing the role of visitors.
The amendments are probing, but the underlying reason for tabling them is to ensure that children are not “dumped” and get a worse service and less monitoring than they would if they were placed in the local authority area. That is particularly important, given that many children who are placed away from home are there because they need a more specialist placement. They inevitably have greater needs, which may change, and therefore we require someone of that status who is in regular contact with them and can make decisions based on first-hand experience.

Kevin Brennan: May I say croeso and welcome, Mr. Williams? Thank you for joining us midway through this morning’s proceedings. As you ghosted into the room so will I ghost in for the first half of the clause and deal with the amendments, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families will deal with clause stand part and new clause 7.
I agree with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that as a general policy it is desirable that the visits should be conducted by a social worker. However, I am concerned that the visits could give rise to problems, and that is why new section 23ZA(5) of the Children Act 1989 requires the local authority to ensure that the visitor has the necessary skills and experience. The supply of social workers has an impact on the extent to which local authorities can comply with that sort of duty, and we have to take account of such practical issues in regulations on the frequency of visits. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise. However, unless the visits are regular and frequent they are unlikely to deliver the policy objective of providing effective long-term supervision of the child’s placement, and of enabling the local authority to respond quickly to any change of circumstances. That means that local authorities must be given more discretion as to who they can appoint to visit the children. We will set out in regulations further details about the functions of the local authority representative and the frequency and circumstances in which the visits should take place. Further details will be provided by statutory guidance.

Annette Brooke: New section 23ZA(5) is all about ensuring that the person who is chosen has the necessary skills and experience to perform the functions of representative. Different local authorities could interpret that in many different ways. Will the Minister consider that point in the regulations that he issues?

Kevin Brennan: Yes, indeed. It is important that we make that clear, but that is not an attempt to dilute the importance of the necessary skills and experience. It is simply that there are circumstances where it may not be either practical or in the interests of the child for the person visiting to be a qualified social worker. For example, the relationship that an individual has with a child may be vital, and the child may have expressed a wish to be visited by a particular individual who is not a qualified social worker but with whom they have established an excellent relationship. It is also possible there will be times when a visit from somebody with a particular specialism is appropriate, for example, regarding the child’s transition to independent living. That person might not be a qualified social worker, but they would have the particular skills or experience relevant to the child’s circumstances.

Helen Southworth: With reference to the move to independent living, does the Minister expect that one circumstance in which a visitor would need to visit a looked-after child would be to look at the accommodation into which they had moved to ensure that it was suitable and met their needs fully, and to discuss whether they were coping with the accommodation and other circumstances?

Kevin Brennan: Yes, I would. That is an important point. We discussed earlier the fact that sometimes a young person’s understandable enthusiasm for a place of their own in that transitional period to independent living can quickly pale when they find themselves living alone and paying bills and, sometimes having to cope with the sheer loneliness. At that point, they might be at their most vulnerable, and we have to take such matters into account. We will make it clear that it is vital that children should be visited by local authority representatives who have a good knowledge and understanding of the issues relevant to them.

Annette Brooke: A further concern is whether that person, if he or she is not a social worker, can access the wide range of services that may be needed for the child and contribute to the relevant multidisciplinary teams.

Kevin Brennan: Yes, they will be able to do so. Rather then set that out in primary legislation, we believe that it is more appropriate to set out in the statutory guidance the detail on what skills and attributes the visitor should have. Obviously, one of them is the ability to access such resources, as the hon. Lady said. We expect that in most circumstances the visitor would be a qualified social worker—we will make that clear—but there may be cases in which that is neither possible nor appropriate.

Tim Loughton: On that point, under what circumstances does he think that that visits from a registered social worker or an equivalent professional would be appropriate?

Kevin Brennan: To repeat what I said earlier, there might be circumstances in which a young person would prefer to be visited by an individual who is not necessarily a qualified social worker, but with whom they have established a particularly good relationship. If a person was suitably qualified, it would be wrong for them not to be able to visit a young person if that young person had expressed such a preference or where a particular specialism was needed, as in the circumstances that I discussed with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South, including the child’s transition to independent living.
We all accept that resource issues come into play, and we have to be realistic about that. Under certain circumstances, for example, an urgent safeguarding issue involving a child might have to take priority over a routine visit to another child who is settled in a long-term placement and making good progress. In such cases, it would be wrong for a visit not to be undertaken simply because someone was not available as a result of having to deal with an urgent safeguarding problem involving another young person. There are circumstances in which such decisions have to be made, but we would expect a qualified social worker to undertake visits under normal circumstances: that would be the norm. For those reasons, it is important that the visitor has the right skills and experience both to provide the support and advice that the child needs and to establish an effective relationship with the child.

Edward Timpson: There are circumstances in which a child has developed a relationship with an individual, and hopefully they have been involved in the process to select that individual to assist them. We know from experience, however, that that person sometimes has to move on, so consideration has to be given to who will take on that role. Will the statutory guidance make provision to assist that process to ensure that the visits do not dry up and that a new person is appointed to take on that role?

Kevin Brennan: Yes, we will make it absolutely clear what the frequency of the visits should be. We will also make it clear that the visits should not dry up under the circumstances outlined by the hon. Gentleman and that their frequency and regularity—this is an important part of the principle behind the clause—should not decline.
For the reasons that I have outlined, it is important that visitors have the right skills and experience to provide the support and advice that the child needs and to establish an effective relationship with the child. The Bill seeks to ensure that that is the case by giving local authorities a limited degree of flexibility, but we will also ensure that the regulations and guidance support local authorities in achieving that aim. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham will withdraw his probing amendment.

Tim Loughton: I began by saying that these were probing amendments, and I was heartened by the Minister’s opening comment that it was essential that visits should be conducted by the social worker. That is a useful starting point.
The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole talked about qualifying new section 23ZA(5), and the amendment would strike it out on the basis that we define who an appropriate person is. If we keep new section 23ZA(5), and the Government do not accept the amendments, I hope that the regulations will define a visitor’s necessary skills and experience. The Minister said that the child might have formed a relationship with somebody who is not a registered social worker. Although it might be decided that it is in the child’s best interests for that person to be a link person, a responsible social worker clearly needs to make the decisions. If a non-registered social worker is performing the visiting duty, that role should be subcontracted out by the responsible social worker. Although the person doing the visiting may have formed a helpful bond with the child, they may not necessarily be qualified to make or advise on the decisions that must be made about the child. A fully registered social worker must be the lead individual. If the visitor is someone below that level of qualification, the regulations should set out how the reporting mechanism is supposed to work.
I am also heartened to hear that the regularity, frequency and circumstances of the visits will be set out. Again, my experience when I go round some of the homes and speak to children in the care system is that there is an enormous postcode lottery in the way in which their social workers visit them, depending on which authorities they come from.

Kevin Brennan: To expedite matters, I can confirm that the registered social worker would supervise the visitor if the visitor is not qualified as a registered social worker.

Tim Loughton: That is very helpful. That also provides a role for a volunteer social worker as well, according to the criteria that I have set out. I note the Minister’s comments about giving a limited degree of flexibility to authorities. There will be exceptional circumstances in which an urgent visit is required, and a registered social worker is not immediately available. Again, if it is to be done in regulations we are, as usual, talking slightly in the dark. We have not seen the regulations, but it must be made clear that it is in exceptional circumstances that it will not be a registered social worker performing this role.
I have seen different children in the same children’s home receiving quite a wide disparity of service from their responsible placing authority regarding social worker visits. It is a key requirement to ensure that that child does not feel neglected and detached from the person who is making decisions about their future. If we can get some regularity now, it is greatly to be welcomed. I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification. On the basis that he will take up some of those points in the guidance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Hywel Williams: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 7—Assistance for looked after children in custody—
‘(1) The 1989 Act is amended as follows.
(2) After section 23ZB (which is inserted by section 17) insert—
“23ZC Assistance for looked after children in custody
(1) This section applies to—
(a) a child looked after by a local authority who is taken into custody;
(b) a child or young person being held in custody who was previously being looked after by a local authority;
(c) a child or young person who has been released from custody but who was, prior to his or her detention, being looked after by a local authority; and
(d) a child or young person—
(i) who is of a description prescribed by regulations made by the appropriate national authority; and
(ii) in relation to whom the regulations impose the duties in this section on a local authority.
(2) It is the duty of the local authority—
(a) to ensure that a person to whom this section applies is visited by a representative of the authority (“a representative”);
(b) to arrange for appropriate advice, support and assistance to be available to a person to whom this section applies.
(3) The duty contained in subsection (2)(b) only applies to a young person aged 18 years or over if that person seeks the relevant advice, support or assistance.
(4) The duties imposed by subsection (2)—
(a) are to be discharged in accordance with any regulations made for the purposes of this section by the appropriate national authority;
(b) are subject to any requirement imposed by or under an enactment applicable to the place in which the person to whom this section applies is held in custody.
(5) Regulations under this section for the purposes of subsection (4)(a) may make provision about—
(a) the frequency of visits;
(b) circumstances in which a person to whom this section applies must be visited by a representative; and
(c) the functions of a representative.
(6) In choosing a representative, the local authority must satisfy themselves that the person chosen has the necessary skills and experience to perform the functions of a representative under this section.
(7) In this section—
“held in custody” means held in detention by the police, prison service or other court authority and “taken into custody” and “released from custody” shall be construed accordingly;
“the appropriate national authority” means—
(a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State; and
(b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers.”’.

Tim Loughton: New clause 7 stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends. I do not want to dwell on it. It was tabled and debated in another place, where it was moved by the noble Lord Ramsbotham, who has great expertise in this subject. It was supported by other noble Friends and noble Lords. Lord Ramsbotham received some assurances from Lord Adonis, but it would be useful to have further clarification from the Minister about what happens to children in the care system who go into the custody system. We should ensure that some continuity of care is available for them, because there is a perverse incentive to consider.
I do not suggest that this happens, but hypothetically there is an incentive for a children’s services authority to offload a child in care into the custody system. All of a sudden that child is no longer a financial burden on the children’s services department, but becomes the responsibility of the custody system, be it in a young offenders institution or whatever. We know that the number of young people in young offenders institutions has risen enormously. Around 3,000 young people are effectively in prison at the moment. We also know that the recidivism rate for inmates of young offenders institutions, particularly those who are sent there on sentences of less than 12 months, is 92 per cent. That is alarming. Basically, sending young people into young offenders institutions is a rapid escalator to a career of crime. The recidivism rate for alternative forms of justice is substantially lower. We have to be a lot smarter in our thinking about how we deal with many of those young people.

Angela Watkinson: We all know that there is a wide range of reasons why young people are looked after—they have not all suffered ill treatment or neglect, for example. It occurred to me when I looked at new section 23ZA (2)(b), which places a duty on the local authority
“to arrange for appropriate advice, support and assistance to be available”,
that there may be occasions on which a family member—a mother, for example—might be well placed to give support. If a family member could not give “advice...and assistance”, he or she could at least give emotional support to a young person in custody, which would help to alleviate feelings of abandonment or rejection and to maintain those essential family ties whenever possible. Of course, that would have to be done when it was felt to be appropriate and beneficial to the young person, and when they were anxious for it to happen.

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend makes a good point. She will know as well as I do about the experiences of young men in young offenders institutions. I visited Feltham a few months ago, which was fascinating if rather depressing, and some of the young offenders shared their experiences with me. Interestingly, the worst possible offence that one can commit against a fellow inmate is to “diss” their mother—I shall not repeat the fairly graphic terms in which one can “diss” someone’s mother that were relayed to me. The staff say that 90 per cent. or so of the visitors will be mothers or girlfriends, and there is an almost complete absence of fathers and father figures who keep in contact with, or keep a watching eye over, their children. That is the harsh reality of where many of the offenders come from.
We also know that up to 50 per cent. of the people in young offenders institutions are products of the care system. It is relevant to the sort of people whom we are talking about that they have the right sort of support if they have to go into the custody system. Those people also need the right sort of continuity of support. They might have been making some progress with the support outside, and they will need to re-engage with it when they leave the custody system to alleviate the possibility of becoming one of the 92 per cent. who go back into a more severe form of the system in due course.
Those are shocking figures and stopping young people getting on that escalator into the justice system is a real challenge facing all of us, as is putting the escalator in reverse for those who are already on it. To mix metaphors, we do not want it to be a slippery slope—I think that the Committee gets what I mean. That is the challenge facing us.
The new clause, the argument for which was better articulated by Lord Ramsbotham in another place, with fewer mixed metaphors than I would use, seeks to specify that the person in the care system who is responsible for the child in care retains and continues contact and support if that child goes into the custody system. It is crucial that the parents—meaning, more often than not, the mother, as my hon. Friend said—should be part of that. The Youth Justice Board could tell us that in about 60 per cent. of cases, a parent attends the case conference and keeps in touch regarding what will happen to the young offender. Of course, there is another important conference before release takes place. Parents should be fully engaged in the process, as should the person outside the family—that could also go for extended family members, depending on the young person’s circumstances.
From the response of the Government in the Lords, I do not anticipate that the Minister will suddenly say that the new clause is great.

Kerry McCarthy: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says about young offenders. I have visited Ashfield young offenders institution, which is fairly close to my constituency, on a number of occasions. I cannot recall the figure offhand for the number of parents who get involved in case conferences, but it is certainly very low—10 per cent. comes to mind, but I would not want to put that on the record because I am not sure that it is correct. One problem is that, geographically, the institution covers a huge area, so it is very difficult for parents to maintain contact with the young people. Talking to some young lads due for release, I found that those who had lost contact with their families did not know what was going to happen to them when they were about to be released, and the idea of having somebody who is—

Hywel Williams: Order. The hon. Lady should put her question.

Kerry McCarthy: Yes, Mr. Williams. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that having that link, whereby somebody maintains contact with the young person when they are released from the system, is the right way to make progress because it cannot be assumed that they will go back into the bosom of their family and friends?

Tim Loughton: I completely agree. The hon. Lady has obviously had the same experiences as me when visiting her local youth offenders institute. The figures that I had were much higher than 60 per cent., but again there is a postcode lottery, and of course there is a postcode lottery given that young people can be placed well away from home.
I am talking about the pure practicalities of family members being able to maintain contact with the child. That is why it is even more important that there is a responsible officer from the children’s services department and that there is continuity of responsibility, particularly when the young person is about to come out. Too often, not enough good work goes on in prison, but we know that some good work takes place there—depending on how long the young person is inside—on drug treatment, alcohol abuse, learning disabilities and so on, which improves the chances of young people being able to get back on their feet, only for all those support mechanisms to be taken away when they are on the outside. They fall off a cliff, in effect, and revert to where they were before they went into prison.
It is essential to have a responsible officer who sees the young person before they go into the custody system, if that is where they are going to end up and they cannot be kept out of it, who monitors their progress, the treatments that they might be receiving, the developments that take place and their achievements while they are in the custody system, and who then takes them on when they are outside the custody system. The new clause is designed to achieve that. I think that the Minister will agree with the principle of it; it is just a question of how we bring it about in practice. This new clause, championed by Lord Ramsbotham, would be one way of ensuring that children in the care system who go into custody receive the assistance that they need to keep them out of the custody system in the future and to give them a decent chance of getting back on their feet when they come out. It would allow them to have all the other things that other children in care might expect and, we hope, because of this Bill are more likely to achieve.

Annette Brooke: We are having a very important discussion on the clause and new clause. This has to be one of the most critical things that we need to address given the very high percentage of young people in custody who were in care at some point. Correspondingly, there may be very low literacy levels and mental health conditions among that group of people. I heard the other day that data are not routinely collected on looked-after children in custody. I ask the Minister whether that is the case. I presume that some data must be collected, but surely we should have quite detailed work on this if we are to provide the level of support that young people need.
I agree that there is a need for a qualified social worker following through and keeping in contact with the young person. In this case, it is a question not just of visiting but of the ability to make ongoing assessments of the young person’s needs. It is very important that it is an holistic assessment, considering all the issues that might apply to a young person in custody.
In conjunction with the Youth Justice Board, there are now some social workers based in young offenders institutions, but I still think that we need a continuity of contact with the social worker, as described by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. If a care order is attached to a young person in custody, there is a responsibility to keep track of them to some degree, but if the care placement is voluntary, I am not sure that the same provisions apply. Nevertheless, it is an important situation in which we particularly need to give greater support to children and young people. I would like some clarification on that point.
Over the past few years, we seem to have progressed quite a lot in getting social services even to be responsible for young people in custody. It has taken High Court judgments to move the agenda on, and the Howard League for Penal Reform has been very much involved. We have moved on, but the outcomes for young people who enter the custody system are still very poor. The Bill offers an opportunity to address every possible issue.
I agree that however a child enters the care system, it is important to work with all the other services to ensure that that young person is supported when they come out. I spoke to a local youth offending team early last year. They explained the difficulty of housing young people who have come out of custody. Because family accommodation is not available, the traditional route is YMCA accommodation. However, I understand that such accommodation carries out risk assessments. I discovered that our local youth offending team has had to place young people coming out of custody in bed and breakfasts, which I suggest is undesirable. My plea—there are so many strands to the problem—is for continuity and an holistic approach. That approach should include social services, local youth offending teams and housing services into the bargain and see the process as a whole.

Beverley Hughes: I certainly agree with Opposition Members that looked-after children who then go into custody are a vulnerable group, and that they can face many serious practical problems getting back on their feet and establishing themselves again in their local communities when released. I agree that they are at high risk of reoffending, although I did not recognise the figure of 92 per cent. given by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. The one-year reconviction rate for young people who have been in custody is about 77 per cent., which is still very high.
Because of that, the Government will publish a youth crime action plan before the recess. One of its central themes will be strengthening the resettlement process. In terms of that special group of young people who have been looked after in one way or another, I recognise absolutely that we need to take the opportunity in the Bill to ensure and strengthen continuity of contact and what follows from that contact—it should not just be a social visit but a visit with a purpose.
I recognise that the amendment is intended to improve how such young people are supported. I do not think that there is a problem with the spirit of the amendment, but there is a problem with some of the detail, and I shall explain that. The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole asked me about information on children in care who are in custody. Hitherto, that has been limited. We have established a system that tells us how many placements of children in care cease because they are admitted to custody. The first year’s figures, for 2006-07, will be released in the not too distant future. That will be the first time that we have had authoritative figures on the number of children who went into custody from care whose placements have ceased.
Clause 16 provides a clear statutory framework to ensure that local authorities maintain contact with all looked-after children, wherever they live. That includes all the children referred to in section 23ZC(1)(a) of the 1989 Act, proposed in new clause 7. Clause 16 also enables us to ensure through regulations that the duty to visit is extended to include children that are provided with voluntary accommodation by the authority but who lose their looked-after status when sentenced to custody in a secure training centre or a youth offenders institution, because they are no longer accommodated by the local authority. That is all the children referred to in section 23ZB(1)(b) of the 1989 Act, proposed in the new clause.

Helen Southworth: Will the Minister address something that is of particular concern to me and which we have talked about a number of times? The clause will be beneficial in many ways. Will she confirm that it will not do away with the right of young people in custody, determined through the courts, to have access to a trained social worker under their entitlement to stay safe? The Minister is well aware of the successes at Thorn Cross young offenders institute in my constituency, which for three years has had a social worker based there. It has seen a radical reduction in the self-harm of young people, but it has also been working as part of a team to ensure that young people have good and effective training while there and good opportunities for effective resettlement when leaving custody?

Beverley Hughes: My Department, jointly with the Home Office, is funding a pilot scheme on the provision of dedicated social workers on-site in a number of young offender institutions, with a view to local authorities taking up the provision nationally. I shall certainly correct myself if I am found to be wrong, but I am not aware that a right of access to a social worker has been declared and enforced by the courts for young people in custody. However, if my hon. Friend is thinking of the pilot, then yes it is showing some beneficial results.
The entitlement of care leavers to local authority services should be unaffected by a custodial sentence, and I think that it would be impossible for a local authority properly to discharge its duties to care leavers in relation to the preparation and maintenance of the pathway plan, the appointment of the personal adviser and the maintenance of contact unless the care leaver is regularly visited by a representative of the authority. As I said to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole, that is not a social visit. It is a visit for a purpose—to assess and to ensure that things that need to be done for that young person are mobilised and put in place.
We made a commitment in the other place to use existing powers in relation to care leavers to require visits to relevant children—that is, those aged 16 or 17 wherever they may be living—and that will include the children referred to in proposed section 23ZB(1)(c) of the 1989 Act. We plan to do the same in relation to former relevant children in due course, as and when resources allow.
The difficulty with the new clause is that the regulation-making power that it contemplates is drafted in extraordinarily wide terms. Potentially, it allows the Government to require visits to be made to any group of children in any circumstances—for example, those living in their family home—and because “young person” is not defined it could similarly permit regulations to require adults to be visited in specified circumstances. It would put on the statute book an almost untrammelled power, with the potential to ride roughshod over the rights of children and young persons and their families. For instance, it could allow a local authority to visit someone who may have been in voluntary care for a few weeks when a baby, only for that youngster to be in custody at the age of 15. One may still want to visit that youngster, but we need to think carefully about the boundaries.
Not only does new clause 7 add nothing substantive to the duties and powers already proposed in clause 16, but it has some significant gaps. For instance, it would not require local authorities to visit those children who acquire looked-after status by virtue of being taken into custody of section 21 of the 1989 Act, for example, if they are remanded to a children’s home. This group of children, on the other hand, will benefit from the new mandatory requirement on local authorities to arrange visits to all its looked-after children. So it has some very wide powers in one sense but also some significant gaps in others.
Referring to other aspects of the amendment, we intend that the person responsible for visiting a formerly looked-after child in custody will be an officer of the local authority’s children’s services and, where possible, a qualified social worker known to the child and familiar with his or her background. That support will be in addition to the role of the separate youth offending team worker responsible for planning how the child will serve the rest of the sentence in the community.
There has to be effective co-ordination for this group of children with the shared support from children’s services and the youth offending teams. The new visiting requirement now provides a mechanism to ensure that this happens and puts an essential safeguard in place, so that they are not allowed to be forgotten by local authority children’s services.
The Youth Justice Board and the Prison Service support our intention to achieve a step change in the quality of support provided to looked-after children in custody by children’s services and for local authorities to do for a child in custody what any reasonable parent would do—visit them and make plans for their release. That is what we expect local authorities to do and how we expect them to behave when they have a looked-after child who goes into custody. Clause 16 allows for that, it requires it to happen. Having heard our approach, I hope hon. Members will not press the new clause.

Tim Loughton: I said that this was a probing new clause to try to tease out some further detail which the Minister has given us.
The right hon. Lady said that it would be impossible in her view for a local authority to discharge its duties without the responsible social worker visiting, keeping contact and developing the care plan while the child was in custody. That sends out a strong message because at the moment that does not happen. It is important that that expectation is rammed home loud and clear, that simply because a child is effectively off the local authority’s patch in the custody and responsibility of someone else, that the responsibility of the local authority is not diminished. In many cases it becomes more important to make sure that they are fully aware of what is happening to that young person within the young offenders institution, or wherever it may be, and that their care plan can be adapted to take care of them when they come out.
Given the greater cross-departmental working between the DCSF, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office—she and I were at the reception last night for the Youth Justice Board—I hope that in practice that there will be greater joined-up working between the youth justice system and the children’s services departments of local authorities, as I know is her intention. I heard the encouraging words of the Secretary of State who spoke last night. Unless that message is sent out loud and clear, that in practice local authorities are expected to keep a watch on their charges as much when they are behind bars as when they are in their authority area then it is not going to happen. It is a useful discussion. We have teased out further detail than we had in the House of Lords, so on that basis I am happy to ask to beg leave to withdraw the new clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 17

Independent Visitors for Children Looked After by a Local Authority

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Kevin Brennan: Even though no amendments to the clause have been tabled, I should explain the purpose of clause 17 to the Committee.
Local authorities must already appoint an independent visitor for looked-after children who have no contact with their birth parents or those who have parental responsibility. In responding to the consultation on the Green Paper last year, children and young people made it clear that they wanted greater access to the support of an independent visitor. They have told us that they value having someone from outside the system to befriend them, to take them out, to be a source of advice and support, and independent visitors can potentially benefit a much wider group of looked-after children than currently have access to one.
Their potential in helping to support placement stability, enabling young people to build constructive relationships and encouraging aspirations and ambitions is considerable, and that is why we want to extend the opportunity to have an independent visitor to all looked-after children where they would benefit significantly from such a relationship. Clause 17 will place a duty on a local authority to appoint an independent visitor where it appears to them that it would be in the child’s best interest to do so, and where the child wants one. We want those who are currently eligible to maintain their right to an independent visitor and will use regulations to ensure under new section 23ZB subsection (1)(a) that these groups continue to be automatically eligible for an independent visitor on that basis.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 17 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 18

Notification to appropriate officer of children in long-term care

Tim Loughton: I beg to move amendment No. 15, in clause 18, page 14, line 27, at end insert—
‘(2A) In each of subsections (1) and (2), after ‘responsible authority’ insert ‘within one working day.’.
We now come to the subject of out-of-area placements, which has arisen already during the Committee, and reflects a concern which I and the my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster mentioned previously—what happens with children who are placed out of area in terms of notification of responsible agencies in that area
A child would typically be placed in a children’s home and somewhere around 11 to 13 per cent. of children in the care system are in a residential home, but it also involves care homes, independent hospitals, NHS hospitals or residential schools, including maintained boarding schools, non-maintained specialist schools, independent boarding schools and colleges, as set out in the guidance. What this amendment is seeking to do is tighten up the notification process.
What happens at the moment is that if Stoke, for example, places a child in a residential home in my own authority of West Sussex, for example—I have already mentioned some 700 children in my county are estimated to be there having been placed by an outside authority—then good guidance, reinforced by Lord Warner some years ago when he was the responsible Minister, is that the authority where that child is placed should be notified that that child is placed there. That must be good practice on the basis that there is a child with particular needs who finds him or herself out of a familiar area.
In Worthing we now have at least 10 independent children’s homes, many including children who are from completely different environments and from quite a long way away. I have to say that things are getting better and inspection regimes for some of these children’s homes are improving, but if something goes wrong, it is usually the local children’s services department who gets put in the frame, even though that child is not their responsibility, or the local police have to pick up the pieces, or the local magistrates then deal with a child who has committed some offence if it has gone really wrong.
I think I cited earlier in the Committee today, and on Second Reading, the response from the probation service union, giving an extraordinary figure of something like over 80 per cent. of children who had appeared in the magistrates court had been in the care system but placed out of authority area, and the first the probation service union had heard about it was when the probation service officers were in court.
That cannot be any good for all of the local agencies involved who then have to come forward and step into the breach for somebody who is not strictly speaking their responsibility. It is not good for people living in the vicinity of some of these residential homes when things go wrong, as happened to us in Worthing but, ultimately, it is not good for the child as well. The child is being let down.
The purpose of amendment No. 15 is to tighten up the reporting mechanisms so that when a child is placed in an authority area outside the placing authority, there is a strict, defined duty of the placing authority to notify the authority area in which that child is placed—nominally, the director of children’s services would be the contact point—that that child has been placed there and we have suggested that it should be within one working day.

Kevin Brennan: I have been listening very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. It seemed that he was talking about out-of-area placements in relation to clause 18, which is what is covered by clause 9, new section 22C. That deals with out-of-area placements in terms of a new duty to place within an area. Clause 18 concerns placements by education or health, which is a mechanism to involve children’s social services in those placements.

Tim Loughton: I quoted the list of different agencies that this will require. The principle is the same as we discussed in clause 9, that whichever the likely agency dealing with something when it goes wrong should be notified. At the moment, they are just not being notified, either at all or until after a long period of time. The purpose of this probing amendment is to specify that they should be notified and ordinarily, it should be done the following day, or within a day of that child being placed in that area. It may have been more appropriate to have discussed it under clause 9 as well, although I think we touched on it in the debate we had around that. Whether it goes in the Bill or whether it will be tightened up in guidance, it should be the normal practice that a receiving authority is notified about a child from the care system within their area as a matter of course, simultaneously, if not in advance of that child being placed there so that they are aware in case anything goes wrong and they are hauled out all of a sudden to pick up the pieces.

Kevin Brennan: The amendment was designed to further tie down the exiting duties, as modified by the Bill, to notify the director of children’s services of the responsible local authority where a child is provided with accommodation for health or education reasons for more than three months. I am sure we will get into the wider debate about the needs of this group of children and the services they should receive when we debate the new clauses towards the end of the Bill. I know a number of hon. Members are interested in those matters, but for the purposes of the present debate, I shall confine my comments to the subject of this clause and this amendment.
We do accept that some evidence suggests that children’s social care teams are not always notified when children are provided with long-term accommodation by health authorities or education departments. In other cases, accommodating authorities have claimed that the notification was made, but the responsible local authority took no action. We do not have any evidence that effective multi-agency working and appropriate involvement of social service professionals is inhibited by any lack of time limits on these notifications. Whether notifications are made within one working day, or any other particular time, is not really the issue here. The real issue is whether the existing notification mechanism is an effective means of ensuring that children’s services authorities consider the child’s social care needs. The amendment does not address that issue.
As children’s trusts embed further joint working and multi-disciplinary teams become the norm across the country, we would expect problems with notifications to become a thing of the past. In the short term, however, we agree that more needs to be done. That is why we have introduced clause 18, which will help ensure that the notifications are made. It will ensure that they are made specifically to the director of children’s services of the responsible authority. That reflects their importance and will ensure that the responsible authority responds appropriately to the notification.
We are going further in clause 19 by requiring the local authority to take specific action in response to a notification. That means that there is a new duty to visit all such children. We will ensure through regulations that the visit is not a one-off but is regularly repeated to provide an ongoing supervision of placements by the children’s social care team. We have not stopped there. We are working with health colleagues by using the proposed new framework for children with continuing care needs to provide practical guidance to help bodies and local authorities work together to address the social care needs of children who are placed in long-term residential care.
I understand completely the sentiment behind the amendment. It is important that all agencies and all parts of a local authority are involved in and aware of children with complex needs at the right time. However, I do not think that the amendment is necessary. On that basis, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw it.

Tim Loughton: I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification. This process was not deemed to be necessary before, but clearly the system was not working before. That is why he sent out additional guidance, not least after a delegation of colleagues from Worthing went to see him about the problems with notification. I hope that this situation will improve. He made it clear that he takes on the principle of what we are proposing. However, the situation must be properly monitored and chased up in practice.
West Sussex and Kent, the two authorities that I mentioned, still have to estimate roughly the numbers of children who are involved. They should have a much clearer handle on how many children from the care system are placed in their authorities and more importantly, exactly who those children are. The Minister is right that a senior responsible figure, such as the director of children’s services should know who is in his or her area and what requirements or needs they have.
I am happy not to pursue this matter at this stage. However, we will have to see the proof of the pudding in due course. That will be that local authorities are able, when asked, to account for the children in the care system within their authority area. Only when we get to that stage will we have some comfort that the joint and inter-agency working that we all support is happening in practice for the best interests of the child. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Kevin Brennan: It seems appropriate to use the opportunity of a brief clause stand part debate to clarify that clause 18 will make a minor change to section 85 of the Children Act 1989 to help improve the performance of the current notification arrangements. It will require placing authorities, that is those exercising education functions and health authorities, to address the notification to the director of children’s services. To reiterate, this is not about out-of-area placements as in clause 9. Clause 18 concerns placements by education or health authorities and it provides a mechanism to involve children’s services in relation to such a notification. It also picks up minor consequential amendments to section 86 of the 1989 Act that flow from amendments introduced in the Care Standards Act 2000.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 18 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 19

Visits to children in long-term care

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Kevin Brennan: Children in long-term residential placements made by health or education authorities are obviously vulnerable. The child’s needs and the involvement of the child’s parents are likely to change over time.

It being One o’clock, The Chairmanadjourned the Committee without Question put.

Adjourned till this day at Four o’clock.